Nike: Big shoes to fill

It has been just over a year since Nike celebrated the  30th anniversary of its “Just Do It” campaign with a series of ads, featuring athletes including Colin Kaepernick, and triggered a controversy. I wrote then, about Nike’s “skin in the game” approach to brand messaging, and argued that it was perfectly placed to polarise and reap dividends in a world of attention-scarcity. But..

Woke might make you broke!

One year later, a (rightfully) sharp post on Pando alerted me to how the NBA got embroiled in the Hong Kong protests conversation, thanks to Daryl Morey, General Manager for the Houston Rockets tweeting his support. China vs NBA resulted. The NBA apologised. Nike pulled its Houston Rockets merchandise from five stores in Beijing and Shanghai (via). It didn’t stop there. LeBron James, refusing to be left out, waded in by stating that Morey was misinformed. Thanks to Nike’s $1 billion lifetime association with LeBron, that dragged the brand further into it. As per USA Today Nike’s business in China from June 1, 2018 to May 31, 2019 is upwards of $6 billion, and has doubled in the last 5 years, while remaining flat in the US. The stakes are high.

Full contact sport

Nike’s campaign last year was “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything”, supporting Colin’s freedom of speech, and protest against injustice. Contrast this with LeBron’s “We do have freedom of speech, but there can be a lot of negative things that come with that too. I don’t think every issue should be everybody’s problem.” Unfortunately, Nike is a global brand and does not have the luxury of selectively being “woke”. Having taken a stand on an issue in the US, it is forced to create a coherent narrative in another geography.

Cultivated Personality

“Just do it” and the overall philosophy of “if you have a body, you are an athlete” centred on the individual. But in the recent past, Nike’s focus has been shifted to taking a stance on culturally relevant topics, and aligning a community that supports that worldview. It’s interesting to see this from a character (morals, values, beliefs) vs personality (qualities and behaviours) perspective. Nike seems to have internalised what it had been exhorting the individual to do, and in that sense (arguably) has only extended its character, not completely changed it. The individual now acknowledges him/herself as part of a community, and has a point of view on issues. That however, has significantly impacted how it acts in public and is perceived by others i.e. personality. One that is still learning.

A firm stance on hot topics means more skin in the game and a potentially anti-fragile brand in the long term. However, issues such as these will force the brand to think of how it can navigate the short term. A community built on a worldview will not take kindly to missteps. And given that many parts of the world are being politically and culturally polarised, this will not be an isolated case. So Nike needs to take a quote out of its own playbook and in business and communication, “Run more than your mouth.” This is quite the Rubicon for the brand. I, for one, hope that it can fill its own large shoes, because this work on the brand is pioneering, and could prove to be seminal in the years to come.

P.S. Nike is just an example. This is a long list of brands that have had to apologise to China.